- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She was all bees-ness, this yellow-faced queen bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.
There she was, foraging in a bed of steely blue-purple flowers, Eryngium amethystinum, a genus that belongs to the carrot family, Apiaceae.
A native bee on a non-native plant.
It was Saturday, Nov. 19 and the temperature hovered at a unseasonable 64 degrees in the Sunset Gardens, Sonoma Cornerstone, Sonoma, Calif.
Unseasonable weather and an unseasonable bumble bee.
B. vosnesenskii are spring bees, and this time of year, the queen is usually hibernating, according to the late Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology and a global authority on bees. In his retirement, he co-authored Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014).
“Bumble bees provide an important ecological service--pollination," he told us several years before his passing. "This service is critical to reproduction of a huge diversity of plants that in turn provide shelter, food (seeds, fruits) to diverse wildlife. The potential cascade of effects from the removal of even one localized pollinator may affect us directly and indirectly.”
Professor Thorp would have loved to see this bumble bee in Sonoma. He also would have loved to know that the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis launched the annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest in 2021.
Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, seeks the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo or Solano. The rules are simple: photograph it, record the time and date, and email the image to the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
Coincidentally, this year UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden each took their images at exactly 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 1 in the Arboretum to share the award.
Page captured her image of B. melanopygus, considered the earliest Bombus species to emerge in this area, and Zagory, of B. vosnesenskii. (See Jan. 3, 2022 Bug Squad blog)
And fittingly, they both knew and worked with Professor Thorp.
Their prize? Each receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, a bee that Thorp closely monitored in its small range at the California-Oregon border. The cup features an image of a bee specimen, photographed by Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer, and designed by UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, professor at Folsom Lake College.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And sometimes it's too good to be true.
We were visiting the Sunset Gardens at the Sonoma (Calif.) Cornerstone on Sunday--marveling at the brilliant blue floss flowers, Ageratum houstonianum 'Blue Horizon'--when a bee with the familiar black and white abdominal stripes streaked by.
It was a digger bee, Anthophora urbana, a speedy bee we've bee admiring for years. We watched this one, a female, hover in front of a blossom for a couple of seconds--just enough time to grab four photos.
This is a native bee, smaller than a honey bee, that nests in the ground and transports pollen on its hind legs. It emerges early in the year, from early spring to summer, depending on the species, according to the authors of California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists.
Its floral hosts include catmint (Nepeta), sage (Salvia chamaedryoides and Salvia mellfera), lavender (Lavandula spp.), phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) and toadflax (Linaria purpurea).
This one was nectaring on a member of the aster family. Ageratum houstonianum, an annual.
According to the Missouri Botanical garden, the plant's genus name "presumably comes from the Greek a meaning not and geras meaning old age because the flowers hold their color for a long time." The species name honors Scottish surgeon and botanist William Houston (1695-1733) who collected plants in Mexico, West Indies and South America.
Want to know more about native bees? The book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists, is a must-have. Published by Heyday Press, it's the work of Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville, and Barbara Ertter, all professionals affiliated with the University of California--(Frankie, Coville and Ertter, UC Berkeley, and Thorp, UC Davis who received his doctorate from UC Berkeley).
They also published a pocket guide, Common Native Bees in Gardens of California, available for purchase on the UC ANR website.
Are these Anthophora bees as fast as everyone says they are?
Yes, they are.
The authors wrote: "These bees fly so fast, you often only see a grey streak zoom by."
Make that a black-and-white streak that's moving so fast it appears grey.
(Editor's note: Photographer stopped the action with a Nikon D500 mounted with a 105mm macro lens: shutter speed, 1/3200 of second, f-stop 10; and ISO, 1250.)
